EM 284 Fenestrated Capillary

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Fenestrated Capillary

Freeze fracture of a the glomerular filtration barrier of a kidney glomerulus. A small region of a flattened endothelial cell is shown.

The filtration barrier consists of three components:

(brown/orange) - endothelial cells with numerous (yellow) that open into its lumen (cyan). The fracture has split the plasma membrane facing the lumen, jumped across the cell, and split the plasma membrane facing the basement membrane.
- (brown) - extracellular face of the plasma membrane facing the lumen of the capillary
- (orange) - protoplasmic face of the plasma membrane in contact with the basal lamina
Basement Membrane - fused (gray) sandwiched between the capillaries (tan/orange) and podocytes (light/dark green)
(light/dark green) - their interdigitated pedicels (or foot processes) form filtration slits

Courtesy of Richard G. Kessel, Richard L. Roberts, and Hai-Nan Tung, Department of Anatomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IW.